In June 2026, the American magazine Foreign Affairs published two heavyweight essays on China back to back. The first, by Richard Haass (president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and former director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff) and David Sacks (CFR fellow for Asia studies), argued that China could resolve the Taiwan question "without firing a shot" — exploiting America's political weaknesses rather than resorting to force. The second, by Dennis Blair (former commander of U.S. Pacific Command and former director of national intelligence), argued the opposite: the claim that "China would inevitably win a war of forced unification" is an illusion of military superiority, and China still lacks the capacity to unify by force.
On the surface, these are two opposite verdicts. Yet read side by side, what stands out is what they share — and what that shared ground reveals about a cognitive turn now underway in America's strategic community.
The Establishment's "Political Capitulation" Thesis
The core logic of Haass and Sacks is not military but psychological and political. They observe that, after the May U.S.–China summit, the Trump administration's stance on arms sales to Taiwan has softened — treating those sales, for the first time, as a bargaining chip, and publicly complaining that Taiwan's semiconductors are taking American jobs. Meanwhile, trust in the United States inside Taiwan has sunk to a low of roughly 30 percent.
U.S. concession → Taiwan loses confidence → allies such as Japan and the Philippines pivot → pro-compromise forces emerge on the island → China wins without a fight → the Asia-Pacific comes under Chinese dominance → America's global credibility collapses
The authors fear that once a concession is made, the demands will ratchet upward: today it is a suspension of arms sales to Taiwan; tomorrow, a reduction of American activity on the island; the day after, a public acknowledgment that Taiwan is part of the People's Republic of China; and after that, a demand that every U.S. ally adopt the same position.
Most revealing is the authors' anxiety about ideological risk. They cast Taiwan as a "showcase of Western-style democracy," arguing that even a shift in the political trajectory of this small island would deal a fatal blow to America's ideological authority. In their eyes, in other words, the Taiwan question was never about democracy — it is about hegemony.
The Military's "Insufficient Force" Thesis
Blair's argument cuts in from the other direction. He concedes that China's military progress has been rapid, but stresses that Beijing is pursuing across-the-board military development rather than specializing in amphibious assault. China therefore lacks the amphibious lift capacity to land and sustain large-scale forces and equipment on Taiwan's main island.
Several strands of his judgment are worth noting:
- American hypersonic weapons could destroy invasion staging areas and logistics supply lines, whereas China would have to disperse its limited hypersonic missiles across U.S. bases throughout the Asia-Pacific — an asymmetry that favors the United States.
- Iran's failure to hit a U.S. carrier with anti-ship missiles suggests that China "would fare no better."
- The United States has accumulated combat experience from its operations against Iran — something the Chinese navy lacks.
Blair also lavishes praise on the military reforms undertaken by the authorities in Taiwan — higher defense spending, longer conscription, and refined operational planning. The troops mainland military enthusiasts dismiss as "strawberry soldiers" become, in his telling, a "credible fighting force."
His policy prescription is a combined package: resume arms sales to Taiwan (even if it disrupts top-level U.S.–China diplomacy), deepen military cooperation with the island, while verbally reassuring Beijing about the one-China policy and encouraging a peaceful resolution. This formula of "military hardness plus verbal reassurance," he believes, would effectively deter the mainland from attempting unification — and perpetuate the cross-strait division.
Different Paths, Same Conclusion
The two essays offer diametrically opposed diagnoses of the status quo — one says China can "win without fighting," the other says China "could not win a fight." Yet their prescriptions are identical: America must hold a hard line on Taiwan.
The establishment fears that American concession would hand China a bloodless victory, and so insists America must not yield. The military fears that American self-doubt would hand China an opening, and so insists America must not quit. One argues from "cannot retreat," the other from "need not retreat" — and both arrive at "do not retreat."
This deep consensus beneath the surface opposition reveals a more important trend.
The Cognitive Turn in America's Strategic Community
In recent years, American assessments of China have swung between two extremes — the "China collapse" thesis (a property downturn, an aging population, local-debt blowups) and the "China invincibility" thesis (dominance in shipbuilding, missiles, industrial capacity, and AI).
What these two essays reflect is a new trend: America's strategic community is moving beyond both extremes. It no longer debates whether China will collapse. Instead, it is constructing a new narrative — one that accepts China's strength as a standing fact, while insisting that the United States still has room to respond, provided it adjusts its current policies.
The essence of this framework is to stop denying the fact of China's development and instead demand that America act on the basis of that fact. It neither looks away from China's growing power nor panics in the face of it; it re-enters the competition on the premise of accepting reality. That is a more mature — and more calculating — form of strategic reasoning.
For China, this carries two implications. First, the American strategic community's understanding of China no longer rests on wishful optimism or pessimism; it has descended into the granular terrain of issue-by-issue contestation. Second, its demand for policy adjustment is remarkably unified — neither the establishment nor the military accepts any prospect of Chinese unification; they differ only in the path to prevent it.
This analysis is based on Yang Sheng Alex's retelling and interpretation of the two Foreign Affairs essays, not on a direct reading of the original texts. The central framework — that the two tracks of cognition converge on the same conclusion — is the video author's own analytical synthesis. Readers wishing to quote the primary arguments should consult the original essays in Foreign Affairs.